The program, which has a cult following at Barnard, spreads to Smith, Trinity, and Pace
Six years ago, Mark C. Carnes, a history professor, wrapped up yet another freshman seminar feeling dejected. The young women in his course at Barnard College hadn’t learned much about Plato’s Republic. Discussions had been superficial. Students were bored. He was bored.
Why did the course flop? Mr. Carnes’s students, he found out afterward, shrank from class discussion not because they hadn’t done the reading, but because they had never really gotten into the text. Plato’s philosophy seemed too esoteric, too vague to be of any relevance to their lives. Speaking in class would have revealed their tenuous grasp of the material. They didn’t want to embarrass themselves in front of their friends, let alone a senior professor.
Mr. Carnes, determined to engage his students, created a new course -- and an unusual pedagogy -- which inverts the traditional undergraduate seminar. Called “Reacting to the Past,” the course teaches classic texts in philosophy by having students play a series of games set in specific historical periods. In each game, on the basis of its setting, the participants take on randomly assigned roles -- like a Jacobin in Paris during the French Revolution, or Wan-li, an emperor in 16th-century China. The professor then retreats to the sidelines as his students recreate impassioned debates that have shaped history.
The course has generated something of a cult following here. Students say they learn more about history from “Reacting to the Past” than in anything else they do at Barnard. Professors are impressed, and the president of the college loves it.
Scholars elsewhere, meanwhile, are intrigued -- and Barnard is working to spread the word (http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/reacting.htm). But some professors worry that the pedagogy deviates too much from traditional methods. And others fear that students become so consumed by the unscripted games that they lose sight of the bigger historical picture.
Nonetheless, the concept has become so popular at Barnard that this fall, three instructors are teaching three “Reacting to the Past” classes. In the spring, the college will offer six. Each of the courses is divided into three five-week games. During the first week, instructors set up the game, handing out game packets, which contain the rules along with supporting material from the period to be studied, like laws or short texts. They give a few lectures on the historical context and the main philosophical texts of the game. For example, in the second game, set in China in 1587, students read the Analects of Confucius, in addition to shorter, related readings on the Ming Dynasty and Confucianism. In game three, called the “Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 1638,” students read The Puritan Dilemma, by Edmund Morgan, and articles on the antinomian controversy -- involving the doctrine that divine grace makes good works unnecessary for salvation -- and trial transcripts. Then the instructors assign roles.
The first game, “Democracy at the Threshold -- Athens in 403 B.C.,” transforms students into members of the Athenian Assembly, who are to decide what type of government to adopt. On a recent Monday, a class of about 16 women begins its fourth week in ancient Greece.
Having voted the previous week to elect a representative council for Athens, the Assembly’s members now convene to discuss the nature of that council. Moderate democrats, radical democrats, oligarchs, supporters of Socrates, and a group of “indeterminates,” who belong to no faction, take their places around a square wooden table.
One student, picked by lottery, is the Assembly president. She runs the proceedings from a lectern positioned at the corner of the table. One by one, she calls citizens up to deliver speeches they have prepared for the occasion.
The first speaker comes forward draped in a toga made from a bedsheet; she is the only one in period costume. “Good morning, fellow Athenians,” she says, proceeding to argue that citizens should be paid for serving in the assembly. Her five-minute speech is received with applause, but an oligarch immediately asks, “Where are you going to get the money? Our economy is bad.”
The woman in the toga suggests taxing the rich. That does not sit well with the Assembly’s wealthy members. The president quells further discussion, noting that other members need time to deliver their speeches. Some students read creatively written essays; others make pointed arguments. The speeches cover a range of topics, including who should serve on the representative council, whether they should be paid, and whether Assembly members themselves deserve compensation. One woman, without going into detail, apologizes for comments she made last week that might have offended anyone. Almost every student at the table speaks at least once, some many times. They have clearly done their homework. Their comments show a familiarity with the ideas at play in the debate over democracy.
For the most part, the students perform comfortably in their roles and give sophisticated presentations. Oligarchs stay in character, arguing that Athens would be better served by the rule of a few highly educated politicians. A democrat responds, describing the level of schooling of ordinary male citizens in Athens to argue that they, too, are educated enough to serve as representatives.
Depending on how persuasive they are, one or more students win the game at the end of the five weeks. At the outset, each student receives a set of “victory objectives” that correspond to her assigned role. For example, in the Athens game, one character must try to persuade the majority of the Assembly members to install him as dictator. If a student attains most of her objectives by game’s end, she gets a bonus in the class-participation component of her grade. Participation usually accounts for one-third of the final grade, and written assignments for two-thirds. The more convincing a student’s speeches and writing assignments in advancing their objectives, the better the grade.
That structure provides an incentive to master the course material. “This class tricks you into doing so much work,” says Violet Durollari, a senior who took Mr. Carnes’s course her first year. She prepared for every session so she would be ready to pick apart a classmate’s argument. “A lot of times when I read texts for class, I’m really apathetic,” she says. “Nothing would ever motivate me to research obscure Athenian law. It not only motivates you to do it -- it gets you giddy.”
Thaddeus Russell, a visiting assistant professor of history at Barnard and an instructor in the course, calls the pedagogy successful. “It really gets students into thinking, arguing, discussing. It gets them personally involved in the issues. They’re actually asked to merge their own personalities with the role.”
While role-playing is hardly a new educational concept, students in “Reacting to the Past” take it to a new level -- like role-playing on steroids. Sarah Cohen, a sophomore who took the course last year in both the fall and spring semesters, harbors a fear of public speaking, but her experience in the class helped her begin to overcome it. “By learning so well every belief of this specific person, this specific party, you don’t spend time deciding how you feel. You’re given a pretty specific character,” and that makes it easier to volunteer opinions, she says.
During the French Revolution game last spring, Ms. Cohen was assigned to play King Louis XVI. In order to save her head, she hatched a plan to deceive a classmate playing the role of Lafayette. She secretly instigated a war that ended up restoring the monarchy, winning her the game -- and in the process, reversing history. “I’m not a devious person by nature,” she says, “but “you have to be really crafty.”
Students in the course, especially those who take the full-year sequence of six games, say it teaches them to empathize with different points of view. “When you’re acclimating yourself to a historical perspective, you’re challenging yourself to think about your own perspective,” says Vanessa Barchfield, a sophomore. “It challenged us to evaluate what we think of society.”
Ashleigh “Nikki” Thompson, a junior, views the class not just as a history course but as an experiment in social psychology. “It’s learning how to manipulate other people, and it allows you to understand people’s actions,” she says. “You have to internalize people’s fears.”
Steven J. Stroessner, a social psychologist at Barnard, is running an evaluation of the course commissioned by Barnard and financed in part by a federal grant. “The students were almost universally positive about the pedagogy,” he says. His studies show that they demonstrate an increase not only in public-speaking skills, but also in self-esteem.
In “Reacting to the Past,” total immersion is generally the rule. In fact, students can become obsessed with the gamesmanship. “The China game gets a little out of hand,” says Mr. Russell, the instructor. Because the student playing the emperor has life-and-death power over the other characters in the game -- just as in historical reality -- she can often call the shots. “There are assassinations and exiles. Last year a student put up a two-to-three-color pamphlet denouncing the emperor all over campus. There were a host of executions,” says Mr. Russell. Students who are “assassinated” must still do the course work but can no longer contribute to class discussion. “That game is less satisfying for me,” he says -- students tend to get caught up in the gamesmanship.
Just that tendency was what struck Frank Kirkpatrick, a religion professor and dean of the first-year program at Trinity College in Connecticut. At a conference on the course at Barnard this summer, he played an abbreviated version of a game with professors from other colleges. The game-playing, he says, “runs the risk of distracting from the intellectual engagement. Too much interest in the game might detract from the intellectual substance. You start thinking, ‘How am I going to win?’” he says.
The game format poses an additional concern. “One of the questions that comes up is, Does it go too far in terms of deviating content?” says Elizabeth S. Boylan, Barnard’s provost and dean of the faculty. In the case of Ms. Cohen’s experience in the French Revolution game, her behind-the-scenes maneuvering reinstated the French monarchy. Will students remember the wrong version of history?
Mr. Carnes says no. The pedagogy includes a debriefing after each game, in which the instructor explains what actually happened in history, and how and why the game might have strayed from historical accuracy. But in the games, he adds, historical events turn out differently only occasionally. “What it’s really about is not the game,” he says. “It’s really about the psychology of persuading students to engage in texts. Most of these games are really collisions of ideas and texts. It’s not really the decisions that are made, it’s the big idea that is colliding. Events are symptomatic of ideas. The students -- part of what draws them into the game is that they begin to believe in ideas.”
Most of the homework in “Reacting to the Past” involves preparing speeches and meeting with members of other factions. But is there enough writing? Students express some concern on that score in their evaluations, according to Mr. Stroessner, the social psychologist. They can expect to turn in about 24 to 30 pages of written work per semester -- 8 to 10 pages per game -- which is less than in some other freshman seminars. But Ms. Boylan, for one, isn’t worried: “What are the other things they gain from this? Passion and a sense of argumentation and logical reasoning.”
Students say the best part -- as well as the biggest challenge -- of the course is the intensity of their experience. During the Athens game, says Ms. Cohen, her faction held midnight meetings practically every night to discuss strategy. And it is not unusual for the course to overflow into dining halls and dorms. “It becomes your life,” says Ms. Thompson, the Barnard junior. As a result, it affects relationships. “Students express a lingering effect,” says Mr. Stroessner. “You meet a student who is in your class -- sometimes you act in a way you wouldn’t otherwise.”
Barnard leaders are so pleased with how the course energizes students that they want to extend the concept to other colleges. About 20 institutions sent representatives to a conference that Barnard held in August to showcase the pedagogy. Some of them, particularly those that do not have much in common with Barnard, are hesitant about the innovation.
N. Simon Davis, an associate professor of history at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, attended the conference. A member of the curricular committee at Bronx, he has mixed feelings about bringing a course like “Reacting to the Past” to his campus. “My initial impressions of it were really quite favorable,” he says. “It is engaging students in an unconventional way. Academia is often a lonely and difficult process. I could see how this could be a welcome break.”
But he is also skeptical. “The game became very heated. It would be very difficult to control certain students.
“Barnard is a very residential school,” he adds. “Students see each other in the classroom and back in the dorm. We are a commuter school, and our students have very tightly programmed lives inside and outside school. This might be too much.”
Rather than offer a course that takes people out of the regular classroom experience, Mr. Davis says, he would prefer to see more of an emphasis on fundamentals at Bronx -- like teaching traditional reading and writing techniques. Speaking of “Reacting to the Past,” he says, “We might have a hard time selling it, because we are going toward [emphasizing] the literary fundamentals. To put it crudely, it’s a luxury we can’t afford.”
Kimmo Rosenthal, associate dean for undergraduate education at Union College, in New York, says the Barnard course impressed him, but he’s not convinced that faculty members at Union would embrace the pedagogy. They would prefer to do more critical reading and focus on a greater number of texts, he believes.
What’s more, he notes, Union, unlike Barnard, is coeducational. “I could probably see some problems in a debating format at a school that’s 50-50. There will be some male students who will be unduly aggressive and try to intimidate the other side. That it’s a single-sex school makes the process somehow work better and not get out of hand.”
Such concerns have not stopped Trinity College and Pace University (which are coed) and Smith College (all-female) from making plans to add “Reacting to the Past” to their first-year seminar programs. Barnard will share the course materials -- on which it holds a copyright -- with the colleges, which have agreed to provide Barnard with data on how the course goes.
Pace, according to Beverly L. Kahn, the associate provost, is revamping its core curriculum. “While a large number of our students are pre-professional, all students take about half of their courses in the liberal-arts core curriculum,” she says."We are interested in developing more student-centered, active learning courses.”
“The student body is extremely multiracial and multi-ethnic,” she adds, so the new course -- to be added to the honors program on two campuses, “will be a wonderful experiment.”
John Patrick Coby, a member of the curriculum committee at Smith, wants to offer six or seven “Reacting to the Past” seminars next year. He first encountered the course by watching a videotape of Barnard students in the French Revolution game. “I was impressed, but a little wary,” he says. “Students were quoting Rousseau’s Social Contract in a somewhat sloganistic fashion.” But once he attended the conference at Barnard -- and heard students’ testimonials -- he became a convert.
“I can’t say this course will provide a thorough understanding of the classics, but it will send students back to these books with a new appreciation, because they encountered them not at someone else’s instruction, but because they needed them,” he says. “It’s a nice introduction to the books. And it does get students seriously invested in a different place and time.”
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